RoboHelp 7, generating WebHelp, navigation buttons work incorrectly

[perminna]

I'm using RoboHelp HTML 7.02.001 and having a problem with WebHelp's toolbar button / navigation pane behaviour.

WebHelp is generated using a customized Titanium skin (but the same problem occurs with standard RoboHelp skins too). In the WebHelp options when generating the help, I'm using the the following settings:

- Toolbar button: custom button (as a link to first page), Contents and Search.

- Navigation: "Show navigation Pane Link in Topics" & "Add Breadcrumbs Links" set on.

- Additional options: "Enable Hightlight Search Results" set on.

- Navigation Pane Preferred Format: DHTML > Pure HTML (problem occurs also with "DHTML > Java Applet > Pure HTML" option).

- Optimize Speed For:  Web Site

On some of the computers (RoboHelp installed on some, but not on all) everything works just fine, but on some computers and on our web server the search button opens an index! The index shouldn't even exist. The index that is shown by clicking "Search" in the toolbar looks like an index that Robohelp could automatically create when using Smart Index Wizard. The wizard has not been used.

The toolbar buttons / navigation pane works correctly in FF 3.5.3, IE 7 and IE 6 on my and my collegues' computers, but the developer cannot get the search show up with the same browsers. The developer says that with Google Chrome and Opera the help works correctly.

I'd greatly appreciate if someone could help me and tell where to look for the solution.

[Willam_van_Weelden]

Hi,

You say that it Works fine on your computer, does it also work correct when you view the files on your webserver? It seems that it only doesn’t work correct on your developers computer. If so, he probably has some kind of plugin or program installed that stops the browser from rendering correctly. I've understood that Bugzilla for Firefox and Google Chrome Frames for IE create problems.

Greet,

Willam

[perminna]

Hi,

As I said, the help does not work correctly on any computer when it's opened from our web server.

The webhelp should be independent and should work in every browser in every OS. But that's not happening at the moment. It doesn't matter which options I use or whether there's an index in the help project or not. The search button brings out an index on some computers/in some browsers. The help depends on javascript and if I disable javascript from by browser (Firefox), the help stops functioning correctly. Also if I generete a webhelp using pure HTML, the help functions incorrectly.

We have liked using RoboHelp but this bug or what ever you call it causes some major problems. Based on what I've googled, the same problem has occured also with earlier RoboHelp versions (found discussion about RoboHelp 5).Why the bug or incorrect javascript has not been fixed?

Why the help is broken if it's generated with "pure HTML" (which contains javascript, by the way)? We want that the help will be unimpeded and won't depend on end-user's browser settings.

-perminna

[Willam_van_Weelden]

Hi,

My guess is that the computers that see an incorrect search pane render the page in pure HTML mode, which happens when the DHTML or Java cannot be loaded. If a user disables JavaScript, you can't expect the DHTML webhelp to function, so this partly depends on the security settings and your output.

The problem with your server may be a security issue on your server itself, if it blocks certain scripts/functions, your output cannot render in DHTML mode and will fall back to the pure HTML mode. Try to see if anything changed on your server and whether that causes this behaviour.

Greet,

Willam